And lo, I have finally justified my coming here:
Plus I, you know, went up in some little old statue that they’ve got over here.
Coming tomorrow: Fallout 3 sightseeing in Washington DC.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
So Bad They Named It Twice
It had been ages since I’ve been abroad, and despite the number of times I’ve visited the States I’d never been to New York, so it’s on that basis that I find myself in my current location: halfway around the world, in a midtown hotel room… on the Internet with my laptop. My excuse is that I’ve walked like 30 miles over the last few days, so get off my back.
The first day was spent understanding just how big Manhattan is, as I walked around the Central Park lake, over to Strawberry Fields, down to Times Square, over to the Empire State Building, all the way west and down Hudson River Park to Battery Park, then past the World Trade Center site and back up to my hotel on 57th Street. Anyone who knows the lay of the land will back me up when I say that it’s not an inconsiderable distance, and my poor legs will serve as evidence.
Since then I’ve been on the requisite games and DVDs Blu-ray shopping trip to the local Best Buys, taken in the American Museum of Natural History, and in a minute I’m going to weather the day’s bad… weather to visit the United Nations and the Guggenheim.
My big project, however, is my Ghostbusters geek quest, which has so far taken in 55 Central Park West – also known as the conduit for spiritual activity in New York – and the adjacent Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, which looks remarkably good for having been stepped on by Gozer the Destroyer.
Nobody steps on a church in my town, indeed. Coming next: the Ghostbusters headquarters and anything else I happen to stumble across. And the chances of some real-life Fallout 3 touring when I visit Washington DC on Wednesday are pretty good as well. I’m packing some Rad Away as we speak…
Keep an eye on my New York 2009 Flickr set for more photos as I upload them.
Disappointed with Scribblenauts
I love my DS, and there have been a couple of great games recently, but where’s the new Phoenix Wright, Ouendan, Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, or Hotel Dusk? The really original stuff that it enjoyed a couple of years back. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed recent good stuff like GTA: Chinatown Wars and Devil Survivor, but they didn’t particularly get my juices going.
Scribblenauts has been critical darling since its strong showing at E3 – this episode of Co-op was actually my first sighting of it – and when you watch it being played it’s easy to see why. Like the best ideas, it’s incredibly simple, and the way that it’s executed with charm and good humour is incredibly appealing. Its sense of humour is one area that I can’t fault it, with a laundry list of cool touches that raise a smile: try spawning in the Large Hadron Collider or Rickrolling the game, for example. Even Internet peculiarities from Keyboard Cat to NeoGAF are represented.
Unfortunately, it’s just overreaching. Is it the DS hardware or the developer’s means that are being stretched? I’m not sure. Either way, the game frustrates me too much to have that much fun with it, which is all the more disappointing when it can be as much fun as it is when it actually works. It’s just that it’s got the uncanny valley of the English language going on, where for every time it works, it suddenly reminds you that it’s a machine interpreting your words when your hunter won’t kill the bear, or when the beekeeper gets chased off by a bee, or when you can’t cushion that spike with, you know, a cushion… It takes away the urge to be creative, instead encouraging you to fall back on the boring but predictable staples, like a gun or a jetpack.
Yes, it’s ‘only’ a DS game, but when the game’s reason for existing annoys, it becomes harder to bounce back compared to the more minor faults, like the janky controls. It’s very, very clever, but it’s probably telling that I had more fun on the title screen sandbox, pitting God against zombies or Cthulhu against a tyrannosaurus or the familiar-looking cyborgs against an EMP device, where the questionable interactions become more forgivable and throwaway.
Even so, 5TH Cell has got itself on my radar, and I’d love to see what it can do on more capable hardware.
The Good and the Bad of Halo 3: ODST
If I begin in the same way that almost any review of Halo 3: ODST that I’ve seen ends, the game is great because it’s Halo. It has the same tight gameplay, the same great weapon balance, the same great storyline. It’s essentially an expansion to Halo 3, so it stands to reason that it shares most of the game’s good qualities. Firefight is also a fine addition, shamelessly copying Gears 2’s Horde mode but, in my opinion at least, improving it with Halo’s slicker, more precise gameplay and extra enemy variety.
Just in case I get carried away over the next few paragraphs and leave you with the impression that I dislike the game, though, let me just say that it’s great. Worth full price? I’m always hesitant to mark a game down based on value – five good hours better than ten stretched out average ones and all that – and on that basis I’d still encourage people to buy it.
But regardless of value, this is presented as an expansion of sorts – it’s Halo 3: ODST and not Halo: ODST, remember – and so hurts for being a modest upgrade of a two-year-old game that wasn’t technically mind-blowing when it came out anyway. It’s been improved, certainly, because the derelict New Mombasa streets are far more atmospheric than anything that I can remember in Halo 3 proper, and the engine also seems to throw more enemies than the 2007 model could handle, but compared to the obvious stuff like Killzone 2 – think the urban environments of that game’s second and third stages – and even the cities of Gears of War, it’s showing its age. There’s little more than the occasional identikit building to slip through, and the architecture looks pretty solid for having been essentially nuked hours before the game. I barely even recall a pile of rubble.
Hell, after a Covenant invasion and occupation you’d expect to at least see some sign of carnage. There’s not so much as a civilian body to be found, though. New Mombasa doesn’t feel lived in, which was understandable when we first visited in Halo 2 but much harder to justify now.
The story is also something that I feel needs looking at. Not the content of it, because I still thoroughly enjoy the Halo universe, but the method in which it’s told. BioShock-style audio diaries are in here, but they’re more like the parts of a radio drama than an individual’s stolen moments, making the implementation seem like a heavy-handed knockoff. Some of the cut-scenes are almost painful to watch in a ‘new’ game as well, with unimpressive character models going through stilted animations while the cast is left with clichéd, throwaway dialogue. This ODST squad ain’t exactly Aliens’ colonial marines, not matter how much they want to be…
It’s difficult to pick at the flaws of the flashback storytelling without spoiling things, so I’ll be brief, but that doesn’t make too much sense either. The first is triggered by an ODST’s helmet embedded in a small room overlooking a courtyard; when you’ve played through the resulting sequence, see if you can explain (a) how the helmet got there and (b) how the Rookie – who, incidentally, has been weakened in some areas compared to the Chief but still seems able to operate a Spartan Laser or effortlessly flip a Warthog, and doesn’t really seem too disadvantaged when single-handedly taking on squads of Covenant – was able to piece together that much information. Similar questions are raised throughout, and it doesn’t seem to stand up to dramatic scrutiny.
But like I said, despite a potential laundry list of complaints, ODST is still a great game to play, and I’ll stand by its value when you get £20-odd worth of Halo 3 maps thrown in for less than £30. It’s just not quite up there with Gears of War, Halo 3 and Gears 2 as Microsoft’s headline acts for the last three years. Let’s hope that Bungie’s really getting its hands dirty with Halo: Reach.
Shadow Complex
I may have come to Shadow Complex late, being that my 360 was apparently on some kind of world tour on its way back from a German repair centre on its release, but this perspective has allowed me to come to it (mostly) free of the hyperbole that greeted it on its release. But you know what? Is it still hyperbole if it’s correct?
I mean, when was the last time we had a traditional ‘Metroidvania’ game that really pushed that sub-genre forward? The DS Castlevania games are great, but aside from some touch-screen features they don’t do anything different to Symphony of the Night.
And while Konami’s been struggling since the N64 days to update Castlevania into 3D as everyone else has realised that doing Symphony with polygonal graphics would have been enough, Chair Entertainment has pretty much done just that. Live Arcade has been good to revising classics with current-gen graphics, and this is to the Metroidvania formula what Street Fighter II HD Remix was to 2D fighters. More so, in fact, since this brings to the table things that just weren’t possible with sprites and a firmly fixed side-on perspective.
Admittedly, it works best when it’s firmly a 2D game, with the aiming occasionally getting a bit sticky when you’re forced to aim away from the screen onto other planes, but it’s more like Super Metroid – my favourite game ever, incidentally – in that the combat, bosses aside, doesn’t really matter that much. Most enemies can be taken down with a few bullets and your later weapons can make mincemeat out of anyone. Even early on, pretty much any enemy can be taken down instantly and silently with a melee attack, aided by AI that ranges in quality from adequate to barely existent.
It doesn’t take long to get through Shadow Complex and find everything when compared to its inspirations – I finished with 91% of items in about seven hours, and polishing it off is a matter of spending an hour mining the final section – but for a £10 download game I’d really have to be picky to criticise it for that. It uses the technology to further itself, with some cool seamless storytelling ideas and clever sequences – raising the water level to defeat a particular boss results in a large section being completely flooded, drowning all the enemies for you – and some tropes inherited from Epic, like the in-game leaderboards for each Achievement criteria that shows you which friends you have to beat as you play.
I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have been disappointed with this as a full release. Maybe that’s my own bit of hyperbole and I’m blinded by my love for this kind of game, but if getting one more person to buy it brings us a step closer to a new Super Metroid of Symphony of the Night then I’m going to do whatever it takes. In any case, Shadow Complex is a certain contender for downloadable game of the year.